Conansmas
by ROBLOXCATSTORM
Summary: It's Christmas of 1995. What happens this time? An even more intricate plot than the previous two stories. Conan gets left behind, Gin seeks out the ultimate present (but at what cost), and Shiratori thinks things in Beika are a little too full of Christmas cheer. Threequel to the other two xmas fanfics. It is August and I am dead inside.
1. PROLOGUE

You walk into the theater, shaking snow off your boots, and are greeted by warmth. You take off your coat and scarf and hat, and any other wintry accoutrements, holding them under your arm. You go through the traditional motions: a ticket bought, a turn to the left, an armful of popcorn, another's hand in yours as the two of you open the heavy doors and scramble down a dark, thinly carpeted hallway into a row of empty seats.

This is the third time you've come to see this movie. It has been three months since its Christmas premiere. As you sit there in the darkness holding the hand of your special someone-or-another, sipping away anxiously at your cola, there is a feeling of immense satisfaction with your life choices. You watch as the flickering movie screen proceeds from pathetic local ads to previews to something brighter, something better. Something jolly and happy and full of holiday vigors that touches your heart deep down every time. You hold the other's hand tighter with excitement flowing through your veins.

You watch as three-dimensional, maybe even four-dimensional objects dance around each other, snow-covered and bouncing, jingle bells resounding in the distance. There is an extra bit of magic in this logo. Every musical strike hits home. It fades into a soft gray, as if it's about to transfer into a cloudy winter sky.

That was where the world began. The full picture finally came into view. The camera, if you could call it a camera, was focused so intently on a Christmas tree that the highlights from the ornaments turned into four-pointed stars of jolly light. (To produce a similar effect, squint your teary eyes really hard at a traffic light, but don't be the one driving.) A title card appeared over this tree, the individual symbols curved and refined like someone had spent hours on it slaving away at the cel, and if you could interpret the language, it would probably tell you something about Christmas.

This all was wiped away, and the Christmas tree became a background object as the field of vision expanded. Several teenagers were skating at an indoor ice rink.

"Hey, Kudo, we should all link arms and make a huge line," said Heiji.

"Dude, yeah," said Shinichi.

Naturally, everyone was up for this, and anyone watching from the shadows would take this as a moment of love and affection towards whoever happened to be next to each other. For the torture of these special moment-seeking nitpickers, I will not elaborate on this, but Shinichi was indeed on the end, and if you can't survive not knowing any longer who he was linking arms with, simply try to imagine your favorite pairing for him being the one that connects him to the rest of the line. Regardless, the line of ice skaters went around in a circle, because that was cool. The formation began to go faster.

In a moment of exaggerated comedy, Shinichi accidentally let go of his soulmate and, thanks to the forces of physics, was flung through several walls made out of fake concrete out into the outside world. The ice rink was on the twenty-sixth floor of the building.

The ascent began.


	2. MIRACLE ON BEIKA STREET

Sugar plums danced a symbolic dance, one of life and death, existence and nonexistence, one of nightmares and paradise. The dance was eternal. They would never stop their tango on the edges of extremes, finding it impossible to escape into a compromise. The dance, the expression of human emotion in the form of movement. Passionate, controlled, dangerous. Sugar plums could not, should not dance, and yet they did. Humanity was not supposed to survive, and yet it moved on eternally, escaping the clutches of death. People would repeat the annals of history endlessly until they ascended to a higher plane of existence, or perhaps nonexistence. Something went wrong. The music became dissonance. The vision began to melt, the sugar plums blurring into a mishmash of color and light, sensory feelings, then the smell of burning sugar.

Gin awoke with a start out of his meditative state. What had he just seen? What had he just felt? What danger was to come to those he loved?

He looked around at his surroundings as he got up to take a drink of water from his canteen. For a year now, he had lived in the remote Verkhoyansk mountain range in northeastern Siberia with nothing for sustenance but melted ice water and rocks. How Gin managed to live off rocks was set aside as yet another Christmas miracle. After Gin had turned good thanks to Santa's magic methods an entire year prior, his heart had grown three sizes that day, but he felt that his shoes were still too tight and his head was, metaphorically, not entirely screwed on correctly. There were still hurdles to bound before he could find himself truly rid of his Scrooge-esque personality. He had been trying to figure out who he was and what life was worth living for when he decided to sneak into Russia illegally and climb the nearest and most barren mountains in an attempt at filtering out his bad side.

This proved successful. With his strong force of will, Gin had reached a level of enlightenment that few could likely ever come close to in their lifetime and had thus heightened his amazing powers of endurance. This is probably partially why he was able to digest rocks. He did not feel cold or wet even after a swim in the snow banks. In nothing but his trenchcoat, turtleneck, pants, shoes, and telltale white-banded hat, he was at perfect peace with nature. Even if Santa's magic ran out at that exact moment, it would not affect his resolutely good nature at all.

But that vision he had had had changed everything that mattered to him at the moment. Something bad was going to happen to his dearest friends, once enemies, and he needed to be there to at least attempt to prevent it.

Gin packed his stuff into a backpack and put on a pair of skis.

* * *

Every person in Beika city liked Christmas a lot. Shiratori Ninzaburo, as an exception, did not.

It could have been for multiple deep-rooted Freudian reasons, such as the fact that he never got an unabridged copy of every law in Japan under the tree for his seventh Christmas, or because his uncle gave him a pack of tissue paper once as a joke (Shiratori did not like jokes).

But it was probably for a deeper reason. The new additions to Christmas from the previous year just didn't make sense to him, twisting the reasonable world he had grown to know and love. There was no way to explain how he won the theoretically impossible lottery last Christmas, much less the fact that Kudou Shinichi had returned to his former self with the aid of supposed magical intervention. (He liked him better when he was pretending to be six and not taking all the fame from the police.) He had witnessed the Christmas magics firsthand and took away a feeling of deep confusion. What was this magic? Why had it suddenly appeared in this city and improved everyone's lives? Where had it been before when he was legitimately in danger? He had no reason to complain about his new yacht and wardrobe of various shades of fresh teal suits, but it almost felt unfair, as if someone (likely Santa Claus) had flew overhead and dumped Christmas magic on Beika-chou.

And who was Santa, anyway, but an advertising symbol sewn together by ancient tales? Why were several adults and teenagers now strangely adamant that this jolly old soul actually existed as well as several elements from every single goofy Christmas special cliché? He felt like he was surrounded by children at work, all of them talking about Santa and how excited they were to get presents from him. This was all coming from police officers, even his seniors. His life had become twisted and confusing, and sometimes he briefly considered a trip to Siberia in order to get away from it all. He had a feeling, though, that the Christmas spirit would follow him wherever he went, regardless of how far away he got from civilization.

Shiratori knew that this year would be no different from the last. Even months after Christmas, the particles of magic still floated about in the air, giving people unnaturally good luck and decreasing the crime rates significantly. This was not natural human behavior - humans were supposed to be selfish brutes with nary a piteous glance towards others. He had witnessed rebellious motorcycle gangs turn to sewing warm Christmas sweaters for homeless people. If this trend continued, Shiratori had a feeling that the police department wouldn't have a very good time about it. He was born to defend the law, and with the law being completely followed all the time, he would have no purpose in life. He had to stop Christmas from taking away everything he lived for.

Shiratori had been pondering this all as he drove to work on December 23rd, 1995. Tomorrow was Christmas Eve, and it was almost practically there, with the entire city already having their halls decked out. He looked wistfully back in his mind to when Christmas had been a commercial holiday, when it was a thing that one could ignore without much regret.

Then Shiratori got an idea. It was a pretty awful one, to say the least. Christmas wasn't going to come this year, no matter how long or eagerly the city waited.

* * *

Shiratori walked into the police office and said hello to Takagi, who greeted him with a smile. Talking to him gave off the feeling that Takagi was radiating the sound of a jingle bell. He was incredibly happy about Christmas. Shiratori only half-listened as his companion listed off the schedule of police Christmas celebrations by heart.

He felt like he was looking in on his fellow police through the window of an asylum. Why were they all so excited, apart from the fact that it was likely that even more of their Christmas wishes would be granted this year? Didn't anyone else see something wrong with this?

* * *

Gin was now in downtown Beika, having used his amazing zen chakra yin-yangs to teleport himself there as a shortcut. Before he could go visit his friends, he needed to get presents. Christmas spirit came before Christmas disaster visions.

As Gin browsed the store for more novelty coffee mugs for Ai, he remembered that he needed money to buy things, and in his initial generous actions he had completely given all of his money to Vodka. How was he to buy another apology gift for her if he didn't even have a bus fare (not that he needed one)?

There was selling, of course. And apart from his clothing and Siberian survival kit, there was one thing that he could part with now that his need for violence was completely gone and unnecessary. His sniper rifle.

Gin went to the black market.

* * *

Gin approached the front door of Agasa's lab, only to find that the house was closed up and its occupants gone. A note on the door declared that they were 'on vacation.' This was problematic. He went next door to Kudou Shinichi's house and saw that it, too, was empty of all residents. A trip down several blocks to the Mouris', and not a soul in sight. Where had his companions gone?

He took more turns throughout the city and then went down a dark alleyway. He stood above a generic manhole and lifted the cover up out of the way. A ladder led downwards into one of his old bases. Gin needed answers. At the end of the ladder, he flipped a light switch within the corridor, and it revealed a hallway. He entered the first room on the left, closed the door and locked it, finding himself in his office before his transition to goodness. Seating himself upon the dusty chair, he used his psychic powers to locate his companions who were in more danger than even Gin knew.

* * *

Shinichi and the crew were hanging out in a hotel. They were in between flights; somehow the only way to get to Hawaii around this time was through New York.

Then suddenly with a bizarre flash of light like flames reflecting off silvery tinsel and a gust of wintry wind as if you had left the front door open during a blizzard, Shinichi disappeared and Conan was in his place, holding a somewhat old-fashioned scroll tied with a red ribbon. It took him a second to notice that this happened, but once the processing in his brain had completed, he started to throw a fit.

"Not again," said Ran. She put a hand to her head in disbelief and frustration, then removed it, watching in awe as Conan tore up the pristine hotel carpet with his bare hands.

Ai walked over and took the scroll off the ground where Conan had threw it in his rage. She undid the ribbon and began to read the message. Everyone who heard it could faintly hear Santa's voice reciting it over Conan's screeches of angst.

"Dear Kudou Shinichi, it pains me to have to inconvenience you yet again, but I recently used up a significant amount of my magic in a war against the Frost Trolls. As you know, magic is not exactly a renewable resource, and Christmas is coming, so i need to borrow this amount from you for a little while. Rest assured that the Organization is still under wraps and good. Hopefully I picked a good time to take it. You'll be back to your regular self again on Christmas Day. Best Christmas Wishes, Santa Claus." A jolly laugh echoed into the silence.

Conan had stopped thrashing around the room and was now laying still on the floor, face down.

"You can't leave New York City without a passport," said Agasa. "And no one's going to believe our story."

"I didn't bring any antidotes," said Ai.

"And our flight to Hawaii leaves in two hours," said Kogoro. "You can't honestly expect us to stay here with you for the time being."

"What else are we supposed to do?" said Ran. "It's not like we can leave him alone in New York City."

They did.

Conan sat outside the airport terminal and watched as the airplane his friends and psuedo-family were inside flew over the NYC skyline and into the horizon.


End file.
